Season’s Greetings: Holiday Art from the Collection

With art that explores holiday cheer and the tradition of artistic gift-giving, Season’s Greetings delves into the Museum’s collection to showcase the artwork, cards, and gifts that artists make for friends, family, and patrons. Some pieces were mailed or given as holiday gifts, while others speak to the season more broadly with wintery imagery.  

Artists of past and present have focused on family and the home in their holiday cards. Artist J. Alden Weir depicted his wife Anna and daughter Caro preparing garlands in the 1889 etching Christmas Greens, while contemporary artist Yinka Shonibare reflected on the space and feel of home in Dollhouse, 2002, recreating the rooms and of his East London townhouse with furniture at small scale for the Norton Family Christmas project.    

Holiday art prints often align with special projects and interests, such as John Taylor Arms, who trained as an architect and produced prints of cathedrals and houses, or Marguerite Zorach, whose linocut of a female figure celebrated gallerist Edith Halpert, founder of the first commercial art gallery in Greenwich Village, New York City.

Later artists have drawn on a range of styles and subjects for their holiday art. A highlight of the exhibition is contemporary works of art commissioned by the Norton Family and mailed as Christmas gifts to numerous recipients between 1988 and 2018. Each year the Nortons worked with a different artist, including Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare, Takashi Murakami, Lorna Simpson, and Vik Muniz to produce editions of new and distinctive small-scale art.